Summer Scout Report

Romantic_L_eads Recommendations and reviews of romantic fiction

Summer Scout Report

ROMANTIC LEADS BY JANINE TAYLOR

RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION JULY 7, 1999

IT’S TIME to start scouting around for lightweight literature for companionship on the beach. Short story compilations are a good way to try out unfamiliar authors, because the occasional dud is more easily forgiven when you buy in bulk. Here are a couple of the latest collections you might want to investigate.

Under the Boardwalk

By Linda Howard, Geralyn Dawson, Jillian Hunter, Miranda Jarrett and Mariah Stewart

(Sonnet Books – July 1999, $8.99)

An uneven collection of beach themed short stories, Under the Boardwalk is obviously geared to the seaside vacationer.

--Linda Howard’s Blue Moon is fast, sharp and sexy. Sheriff Jackson Brody meets Delilah Jones, a new-age witch, while protecting her from a red neck stalker.

--Castaway by Geralyn Dawson is a disappointing effort at a historical romance that reads too much like a contemporary. Drew Coryell is a beach bum fisherman made good. He is surprised to find his ex-wife, Hannah Mayfield, has arrived on his private island for a three-day effort to extract an important historical document from him. Coryell uses the document as bait to lure Hannah into providing him with the honeymoon they never had.

--Ruined by Jillian Hunter is a cute, wonderfully funny Cornwall historical. DeWilde Manor is the scene of a shipwreck and the sinking of Sydney Eloise Windsor’s reputation. She and her shallow friends beach their yacht and Rylan Anthony DeWilde comes to their aid. He promptly decides to rescue Sydney from a life of boredom by orchestrating her social ruin.

--A mildly entertaining adjunct of her Fairbourne series, Miranda Jarrett’s Buried Treasure is the story of Zachariah Fairmont’s little sister Miriam Rowe. Miriam’s childhood sweetheart, Jack Wilder has arrived in port just in time to interfere with Miriam’s wedding plans.

--Swept Away by Mariah Stewart will not sweep anyone away. When private investigator Jeremy Noble decides go to Bishop’s Inn for a vacation he anticipates Jody Beckett’s wonderful cooking and company. Unfortunately, Jody chooses this week to take a long-earned trip. After a painfully long preamble and back-story, they finally meet up on the beach in New Jersey.

Under the Boardwalk is worth a buy for Howard and Hunter. Although Dawson, Jarrett and Stewart are great writers, none of their short stories are quite up to their usual standards. You won’t mind getting this book damp and sandy.

Veils of Time

By Lynn Kurland, Maggie Shayne, Angie Ray and Ingrid Weaver (Berkley – July 1999, $8.99)

This collection of four time-travel tales is sometimes thought provoking but fortunately for the vacationing set, mostly frivolous.

--Lynn Kurland’s And the Groom Wore Tulle is the funniest of the lot. Ian MacLeod, is a medieval Scottish warrior and all around nice guy. Instead of going through death’s door, MacLeod arrives in a wedding dress storeroom in New York City. Designer Jane Fergusson finds the adorable Scot clad in a white dress awaiting Saint Peter.

--The Con and the Crusader by Maggie Shayne introduces us to Jack McCain, a charming but lazy con man. As he dodges bullets from his final victim he accidentally jumps into a magic wishing well. He wishes for his life promising to work harder than he ever had. He arrives at the bottom of the well a sorghum farm in 1890, just in time to marry Emily Hawkins who needs the shifty swindler to work or he’ll be sent to jail.

--Angie Ray’s A Bride Most Common is not my favourite in this compilation but intriguing enough to recommend to time travel fans. Lucy Taylor goes back to Regency England to save today’s environment arriving in the body of a woman at her wedding to merchant, Kieran Walcott. Lucy is building a time-defying two-way radio, spying for Napoleon and trying to avoid intimacy with her new husband. It takes a lot of implausible ingenuity.

--In Conyn’s Bride by Ingrid Weaver, Conyn ap Rhys, a Celtic warrior travels forward 23 centuries to reclaim his time-traveler bride, Alanna Moore, an antiquities expert. When she can’t remember him, he decides to woo her. Of course he almost murders her fiancé and his sword causes a bit of a stir in Toronto.

Janine Taylor is a Halifax writer. She can be reached at romanticleads@hotmail.com

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